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This year’s Engage conference in Manchester brought together educators, curators, researchers, artists and policymakers to discuss the diversity of approaches to arts and health – both physical and mental – in current practice. Artist and writer Alistair Gentry reports.

For the final Assembly event in the current series, a-n was in Cardiff for a day of discussion and debate around how to survive as a creative practitioner. Trevor H. Smith reports.

When artist and writer Alistair Gentry first shared his experiences of depression earlier this year it resulted in a flood of private feedback and led a-n to commission a series on artists and mental health for our Resources section. Drawing on the conversations he’s had with artists and arts workers, he argues for more openness about mental illness and wellness in the arts.

The UK has the most highly developed arts infrastructure in the world. But, asks 2016-17 Clore Visual Artist Fellow Maurice Carlin in the first of two short provocations, imagine if it all disappeared overnight. Would it make a difference to your career? Would you still make art? And what do we want this infrastructure to do?

At IAA Europe’s recent annual two-day general meeting in Berlin, a key workshop discussed the issue of social security and the mobility of visual artists within Europe. Pippa Koszerek reports that, despite Brexit, such discussions remain important to UK artists.

Artist Ellie Harrison’s year-long Glasgow Effect project has attracted widespread outrage on social media and in the national press, with many accusing her of ‘poverty tourism’. Julie McCalden makes a case for a more nuanced response to the project and argues the case for more, not less, public funding for the arts.

At a recent festival in Belgium about Europe-wide cultural solidarity, artist and AIR Council member Joseph Young talked about a-n/AIR’s Paying Artists campaign. He reports on a debate characterised by politically outspoken artists and networking over mojitos in the Che Guevara tent.

A recent event in Leeds organised by Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy asked whether artists were the key to making a step change in arts and culture giving. Amelia Crouch went along and found that the issue of low pay for artists was all-but ignored – but that the idea of artists as fundraisers may not be all bad.

While strategies to pay artists better are forging ahead in the UK, this vital issue is also on high on the agenda in some other countries. Susan Jones reports on Working Artists: aspects of art and labour, a recent conference in South Korea which she also spoke at.

The issue of artists’ pay and exploitation in the US is prompting a variety of responses that question what it means to be an artist in the current economic climate. Abigail Satinsky, associate director at Chicago’s Threewalls gallery, surveys the landscape and asks whether we need to look at how we value and define art and artists.

Why do so many artists get asked to work for free, so often? And what’s the best way for an artist to deal with these requests, and ensure they’re financially secure and their work is valued? Michelle Aldredge explores the problem and encourages ‘mindful decision-making’ as a way forward.

One half of the London-based performance company There There with Dana Olărescu, Bojana Janković argues that the economic pressures more and more artists face are ultimately shaping the kind of work that gets made, especially by emerging artists, with profound and long-term consequences.

a-n’s Executive Director Jeanie Scott reflects on an incredibly busy year for the organisation that has seen the publication of the Paying Artists Exhibition Payment Guidance, wide-ranging support for artists through a-n bursaries, and membership reach a record high. And, despite an increasingly messy global situation, says there’s much to look forward to in 2017.

Newcastle-based artist Kathryn Hodgkinson believes that the city council’s planning decisions are having a detrimental effect on the area’s creative community. In the wake of the recent decision to demolish the creative space Uptin House to make way for ‘yet another block of student flats’, she argues that local authorities need to embrace the true value of artists.

Artist and AIR Council member Joseph Young attended the recent Europe-wide IAA conference in Pilsen, Czech Republic, where he was speaking about the Paying Artists campaign. He reports from the home of Pilsner lager on three days of discussion, debate and far too many procedural matters.

This year’s Arts Council England and British Council-supported No Boundaries – billed as a symposium on the role of arts and culture – took place over two days at the end of September at Watershed in Bristol and HOME, Manchester. Featuring talks and discussion from an international cast of contributors, it once again had a live link between each venue and was also live streamed. Artist Julie McCalden reports from Bristol, while arts consultant Mark Robinson presents a view from the rainy city.

A new report urges those working with arts and culture to rethink their contribution to a vision of sustainable development that benefits the whole of society. Report co-author, Mark Robinson, introduces the provocation and identifies three vital ‘practices’ that can only be achieved by collaboration between artists, institutions and an intelligent funding ecology.